As we saw in our concert this afternoon, the Italian Baroque style was highly regarded even beyond its sun-drenched borders. At certain moments – and particularly in connection to certain genres like the trio sonata, concerto, and opera – Italian works and composers were “all the rage.” Tonight’s concert takes the broad view of Italian music in the 17th and early 18th centuries, bringing together three strands of its evolution: composers born and trained in Italy, composers bringing aspects of other styles to Italy, and composers outside Italy helping to spread Italian stylistic and technical trends abroad. We begin with Corelli – the paradigmatic violin virtuoso – and end with Lully, Versailles’s crown jewel but who was actually born in Florence!

Four over 400 years, composers have been inspired by the harmonic formula known as “la folia.” The term may derive from folle (crazy) and stems from a festive Portuguese dance. “La Folia” proved most popular in Italy during the 1600s, but already by mid-century it had migrated to France and Germany. Perhaps the best known folia is by Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713). Corelli’s many trio sonatas alternate between two prevailing systems: sonate da chiesa or church sonatas, which typically include four movements, slow-fast-slow-fast; and the sonate da camera or chamber sonatas, which are made up of a series of popular dances. His Opus 5 collection combines the two: Nos. 1-6 are church sonatas, Nos. 7-11 chamber sonatas. But Sonata No. 12, La Folia, differs entirely from both genres. Like the majestic Chaconne closes Bach’s Violin Partita in D Minor, Corelli’s Folia culminates his collection with a grand set of variations on this beloved theme.

Folia is built on a very simple harmonic formula, set out across two phrases. The first moves from D minor to the relative major key (F) and back to an incomplete cadence. The second phrase repeats that progression but speeds up the harmonic rhythm slightly at the end to allow full closure back in D minor. It is worth having that concept in mind as listeners, because we are going to hear the exact same pattern repeated 24 times! Eventually, the harmony recedes somewhat in our perception, functioning instead as a backdrop against which Corelli’s increasing virtuosic variations stand out in full relief.

A century earlier, such instrumental virtuosity was almost unimaginable. At that time, the voice still reigned supreme; technical and harmonic innovations took place primarily in madrigals, noted for their high degree of expressivity, chromatic experimentation, and poetic sophistication. The madrigal’s home was Venice, but by the mid-1500s important madrigalists had come to Italy from northern Europe. Talented youths like Giaches de Wert (1535-1596), born near Antwerp, often drew attention from visiting nobility, who were constantly seeking artistic treasures to adorn their courts back home. De Wert was invited to Italy under the protection of Francesco d’Este for a performance in his wife’s private chapel. While he composed sacred music and instrumental collections, de Wert remains important for his 200+ outstanding madrigals.

“Non sospirar pastor,” from de Wert’s Eighth Book (1586), provides a perfect instance of his style. Scored for five voices, it unfurls like a sumptuous sonic banner, rippling with the buoyant interaction of different voices intoning different passages of text. The text comes from the Third Eclogue by Torquato Tasso. At the end of his life, de Wert composed “Amor se non consenti,” which appeared in his Eleventh Book of madrigals (1595). The anonymous text repeats familiar clichés from the era (the pain of losing love, the powerful desire to see the beloved’s face, etc.), which de Wert sets in fairly consonant phrases free of obvious dissonance.

There can be no escaping the figure of Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) in programs celebrating Italian Baroque music – and rightly so. Although he spent the majority of his life in Venice, Vivaldi did travel to other Italian cities (Brescia, Milan, and Rome, for instance) and eventually tried to secure a post in imperial Vienna. Last evening’s concert celebrated Vivaldi’s diverse output, and tonight we can sample another one of his brilliant concertos.

Around 1728 Vivaldi composed this particular Concerto for Recorder and Strings in C Major, RV443. His famous Four Seasons concertos – with their programmatic sounds of nature and accompanying sonnets – are hardly standard for the genre. Rather, it is a piece like RV443 that typifies Vivaldi’s concerto ideals. The opening Allegro starts with an infectious ritornello for the full band, followed by a series of impossibly virtuosic solo episodes for recorder with light accompaniment. The central Largo requires a massive withdrawal in rhythmic intensity, but it also provides some needed emotional contrast. The movement suggests a solo aria with long-breathed phrases from the recorder. Vivaldi closes the concerto with another astoundingly difficult Allegro finale. This music is meant to impress. Given Vivaldi’s work at the Ospedale orphanage, whose young female students were acclaimed for their musical brilliance, it is entirely possible the concerto was created for one of them.

Plucked-string instruments (chitarrone or theorbo, lute, archlute, and guitar, not to mention the harpsichord) played a significant role in Italian music, especially as accompanied madrigals and monodic songs grew in popularity. As such, lute makers and virtuosi held a prestigious position in society. Alessandro Piccinini (1566-1638) was born into such a family: his father and brothers were all lutenists active in Bologna. Piccinini is important today for two collections of lute music he published (in 1632 and posthumously in 1639) as well as the wonderfully detailed preface about instruments and technique that heads the earlier volume. From that 1632 print, we hear his Passacaglia in G Minor. As with Corelli’s Folia, Piccinini’s Passacaglia presents one of those popular forms based on a repeating bass/harmonic progression, above which the performer is invited to delve into numerous flights of fancy. All of these forms – chaconne, passacaglia, theme and variations – delight by virtue of combining both the familiar (harmonic foundation) with the constantly changing (melodic and textural variations).

Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672), the most acclaimed German composer of the 17th century, worked mainly in Dresden, but he spent several formative years (1609-1612) in Italy studying with Giovanni Gabrieli. Schütz cultivated his master’s antiphonal sound with split choirs or instrumental ensembles, for which he used the term “sacred symphonies.” In 1628 he went to Venice for a second period of study, this time with Claudio Monteverdi, Gabrieli’s successor at St. Mark’s. The following year Schütz published twenty Symphoniae Sacrae. These mostly present Biblical psalms as concertos for voices and instruments. The beautiful “O quam tu pulchra es” sets a portion of the erotic Song of Solomon. Schütz opts to score it for solo tenor and bass voices with violin and continuo. Each refrain of the leading text – “O how lovely you are!” – helps delineate different melodic sections, and instrumental ritornellos, almost in anticipation of the concerto form, separate succeeding phrases of text.

By the time Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) began imitating and adapting the Italian concerto, a lot had changed in the form. Vivaldi’s generation exported a robust model, built on a three-movement design, virtuosity, and a conversational exchange between solo and tutti. Bach made numerous transcriptions of Vivaldi’s concertos before striking out with original works in the genre. These developments span his compositional career and are perhaps best epitomized in the six Brandenburg Concertos, BWV 1046-1051, written in Köthen around 1721. Each Brandenburg Concerto explores varying degrees of coordination between the soloists and the full ensemble, as well as different combinations of solo instruments. Bach didn’t always have many musicians at his disposal in Köthen. But those few musicians – whose ability clearly compensated for their scant numbers – helped inspire fabulous, diverse scorings.

Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G Major showcases two recorders and solo violin. The violin receives occasional moments to shine and plenty of shimmering passagework. But its true role is to support Bach’s brilliant wind writing. Their close counterpoint draws the ear, and the first movement’s most appealing moments come when Bach pares the texture down to just recorders. The slow movement offers a study in chromatic writing and emotional gravitas. Bach dwells on a theme built of two-note slurs, enveloping the movement in countless sigh gestures. A final flourish and Phrygian cadence complete the impression of an antique-sounding Adagio. This mood is cast off by the lively, skipwise motion of the ensuing finale. At first, the recorders remain silent until all fugal entrances have occurred. They eventually enter and create the finale’s finest moments in episodes based on canon and free counterpoint. Bach’s ability to sustain harmonic tension through suspension chains ensures that the dynamism continues up to the final cadence.

INTERMISSION

After intermission, our focus shifts to connections between Italy and France – in particular, Lully, the Couperins, and musical life at Versailles. Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) attained the very pinnacle of success in French musical society, serving for over 30 years as resident composer and violinist under Louis XIV. Such heights were hardly to be expected from a poor miller’s son born in Florence, Italy. We have almost no verifiable facts upon which to build a picture of Lully’s early life, and he clearly took pains to suppress his true origins. Born Giovanni Battista Lulli, he Gallicized the name and claimed aristocratic parentage even before arriving in France as a teenager. In 1652 Lully entered the King’s service, took charge of the royal string band, and fashioned it into one of Europe’s premier ensembles.

Despite his background, Lully tried to parry accusations that he was bringing “Italianisms” into French grand opera (which is true), though he clearly benefited from the cultural exchange. Consider Armide, Lully’s 1686 opera based on the problematic love of an Arabic sorceress (Armide) for a Christian knight (Rinaldo). Sorcerers were a favorite character in classical literature. To wit, Circe, the sorceress of Homer’s Odyssey who turned men into captive beasts. Her myth thrived throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, inspiring Tasso’s depiction of Armida in Jerusalem Delivered (1581). The King himself suggested the story of Armide and Rinaldo to Lully, and the latter obliged with a scintillating, five-act masterpiece. It was revived for many future seasons at Versailles before being supplanted by more contemporary settings from Vivaldi, Salieri, and Gluck.

Lully opens Armide with a conventional Overture, typifying the very features that have given such movements the designation of “French overture.” This is a three-part structure in which regal gestures, marked by dotted rhythms and subtle chromatic touches, surround the central contrapuntal section taken at a faster tempo. Hints of the A section infuse the fugal subject, thus drawing the two parts more tightly together.

One of Lully’s younger contemporaries at court was Louis Couperin (ca. 1626-1661). Couperin came from a family of musicians, though they were employed in more provincial locations before rising to prominence. By simple good luck, Couperin happened to meet and impress the King’s royal harpsichordist, who graciously took the young man on as a private student. Couperin relocated to the capital city, began composing in earnest, and had ample opportunity to perform for the most influential patrons of art. He is best remembered today for his unmeasured preludes. These free, vibrant preludes are written in a unique notation without measure lines. Subtleties of rhythm and articulation are left to the performer’s informed discretion.

Many composers came to Paris to meet Couperin, including Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-1667). Froberger was born in Stuttgart into a musical family; his father and four brothers all became professional musicians. His education must have been successful, for he became a paid organist to the Imperial court at Vienna in 1637. Later that year, having just turned 21, he was given an extended leave to study in Rome with the famous Girolamo Frescobaldi. During the next decade of his life, Froberger traveled across Italy, onward to the Low Countries, stopping long enough in 1652 to meet and befriend Louis Couperin.
Froberger is perhaps the first major composer who wrote exclusively (barring only two exceptions) for the keyboard. Additionally, his training with Frescobaldi brought the Italian’s idiomatic style north of the Alps to Vienna and beyond. Froberger paid particular attention to cultivating the Baroque dance suite, and it is in that arena that his Allemande in G Minor greets us this evening. He was enamored of Louis Couperin’s improvisational style and infused the French decorative approach to melody into his own works.

Acclaimed in his own way, Louis would eventually be overshadowed by his nephew, François Couperin (1668-1733), nicknamed “The Great.” François grew up surrounded by music and famous musicians. He would eventually attain the highest musical job at Versailles: royal organist and court composer, commanded with organizing and playing both solo and chamber music concerts for the King’s pleasure. This meant offering weekly chamber concerts for most of his remaining years. In 1724 Couperin wrote a suite in seven movements on Parnassus, or The Apotheosis of Corelli. (Parnassus, you may recall, was the mythical home of Apollo and the Muses.) Couperin calls it a “grand sonata,” scored for two violins and continuo. Each section carries a poetic designation: Corelli begins at the foot of Mt. Parnassus requesting the Muses provide him entrance to the sacred realm; he joyfully ascends Parnassus, drinks from the sacred spring, and meets Apollo himself. In one sense, Couperin is clearly gesturing toward “program music.” Yet there is little one can detect audibly that directly embodies what is being poetically mentioned – apart from passages that are particularly animated in reference to Corelli’s “joy.” Instead, Couperin writes a traditional multi-movement instrumental suite indebted to Corelli’s facile and sophisticated violin writing.

The evening concludes with another highlight from Lully’s Armide: the Passacaille from Act 5. A passacaglia, to use its more common Italian name, was an established form favored in the Baroque. Its basic premise features a recurring melodic (and sometimes harmonic) pattern that repeats multiple times, each repetition offering chances for variation, ornamentation, and changes in mood and orchestration. Armide’s passacaglia in G minor vacillates between full ensemble and passages reduced to just three players (recorders with violin). Adding to its charm is the repeated chord progression, a stepwise descent from the tonic to the dominant in minor mode. These technical terms may not resonate, but this familiar “lament bass” progression is one of the most commonly used passacaglia ideas. The entire ten-minute episode begins in the orchestra but flows without pause into a section featuring chorus. Lully brilliantly fuses instrumental and vocal textures while maintaining the passacaglia’s dramatic momentum. The scene takes a very congenial view of Rinaldo’s situation (he is a prisoner, after all), and the chorus is here simply to divert him while Armide skips off to consult with underworld oracles.

Jason Stell, © 2026